


Five Times Micah Didn't Meet Mohinder

by Nope



Series: Five Times Micah [6]
Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-11
Updated: 2007-11-11
Packaged: 2018-10-25 02:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10754571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin.





	Five Times Micah Didn't Meet Mohinder

**1\. Timeline Two**  
  
Thunder and screaming and they're too late. Five seconds. Might as well have been five years. And New York is rubble, just like that. There's a smell in the air, under the dust, like pork but sweeter and Mohinder realises it's people burning scant seconds before stumbling against a shattered wall and vomiting. A little voice starts gibbering about radiation in the back of his head. Another that sounds a lot like his father is telling him to pull himself together, to be the good scientist. The rest of him is stuck on the fact that he's probably breathing vaporised people. Dead dust.  
  
Nathan hasn't moved since the blast. He's standing where he was, dust in his hair, all over his suit. Mohinder watches the man's lips move, silently shaping a name, but he can't focus enough to read it. He looks away again. Evolution is violent. This is how species work, wiping each other out. He dry heaves, wipes his mouth. Nathan is crying. Mohinder looks everywhere else. This is Nathan's home, not Mohinder's. His father's home, not his. He has never missed India more. Nathan cries silently, without drama. Mohinder looks away again.  
  
There's something moving in the dust. He sees a flash of blonde hair, dust and blood, stones falling. There's too much dust and he can't put it together and then suddenly he does, finding the pattern, the arm there, the hand, a foot down there -- there's someone here, alive, under the rubble. He yells something at Nathan, he doesn't know what, and he's down there, scrabbling in the mess to help, to help her, he realises, and it's good, it's exhilarating to do something, to actually help, and Nathan is suddenly there at his side with him and the woman, freed, coughs and blinks dust away and looks up at them and Nathan says  
  
"Niki?"  
  
like it's impossible, and her mouth moves, and Mohinder starts to speak and something hits him like a car and it's only after he's crashed through the wall that he understands she hit him. Not even properly. A wild blow. She's raging at Nathan. He can barely hear her through the ringing in his ears. Something about Linderman. Nathan and Linderman and the bomb. Mohinder pulls himself up onto his knees and watches aghast, amazed, as she effortless grabs up a broken, steel reinforced concrete column, and swings it as easily as Mohinder would a baseball bat. Nathan barely dodges, hand in his jacket.  
  
"You killed my son, you bastards!" Niki screams. "You killed my son!"  
  
The gunshot is impossibly loud.  
  
(And five years later, it is this moment he thinks of when Nathan talks of genocide. The blooded shoulder. The broken concrete. The falling woman. The trembling gun. Kill or be killed. All those sons and daughters. And he says a prayer for the boy he never met and never could.)  
  
  
  
 **2\. After Math**  
  
Save the cheerleader, save the world. Wasn't that what Peter had said?  
  
From outside, Mohinder watched the lines rise and fall on the monitors and wondered. There was no victory in evolution, no triumph. Evolution didn't stop. Adaptation. Mutation. Natural and unnatural selection. Everything changed, always. But. Populations evolved, not individuals. Populations improved. Individuals could get left behind. Like Molly almost had been, until he'd found the cure. Like Matt still could, scars on him now instead of bullets in him, but so still Mohinder had to keep checking the monitors. Like Hawkins in the next room along, one deflated lung, blood in the other.  
  
This too would change. For better or worse, who could know? Evolution was like nature; they pretended they had it tamed but they were all just one bad day away from jungles. Matt. Molly. D.L. Mohinder forced himself to look away from Matt's monitors and found his eyes automatically went to the ones in the next room. He almost laughed. Sureshs had always been a little bit obsessive. Like father, like son.  
  
D. L.'s son was curled up on the bed with him, asleep under his father's arm, head against his father's chest.  
  
He caught a flash of blonde in the reflection and he turned, startled, to see Niki there. Mohinder felt bad about not having seen her before, and started to his apologise when she dragged her eyes away from the window, except she got in first with an "Oh! Doctor Suresh! I-- I didn't--"  
  
"It's been a long day," he said.  
  
Niki nodded gratefully. "I just." She took a deep breath, wiped at her face. "I wanted to thank you. For helping."  
  
Mohinder wasn't sure he'd helped the man at all, but he nodded anyway. "I'm sure they're doing everything they can. How is he?"  
  
"He's. He's hanging in there. It isn't the first time he's been shot," she added. A noise escaped her, something between giggle and sob, and she covered her hand with her mouth, eyes filling again.  
  
They both looked away, through the windows. Matt, breathing. D.L. The boy's head rising and falling a little with each breath. Shoulder to shoulder, they watched them sleep and prayed for a happy wakening.  
  
  
  
 **3\. Doctor Suresh**  
  
Micah wakes up thirsty and confused, sits up in panic. It's still dark out, but there's just enough light for him to make out Molly curled up on the other cotbed and he remembers. They're in Doctor Suresh's apartment with Officer Parkman. Safe. No more Linderman. No more Candice and never knowing what was real and what wasn't. Unless this whole thing was one, long sick joke -- no. No. He needed a drink.  
  
Pretty sure where the sink is, even in the dark, Micah pushes himself off the bad gently and slowly creeps across the floor so as not to wake Molly. The door creaks a little, so he doesn't open it all the way, just pushes around it and out into the apartment proper. There's a light on in the other room, so he assumes Officer Parkman is up. It doesn't seem worth bothering the man just for a glass though, so he turns the other way, into the kitchen area. There's a stool, handy for climbing on, so he can get a glass down. He pours a little water in it, washes it out, and then fills the glass properly before clambering back down off the stool. And then it's back the other way to his temporary bed.  
  
Except he's half way there when he notices there's a book on the table that wasn't there before, and a laptop, and there are two voices coming from the lit room and he doesn't recognise either of them. He dithers for a moment, then comes closer, putting his glass on the table -- oops. Hopefully those papers wouldn't suffer for the water ring on them -- and picking up the book. Activating Evolution. By the other Doctor Suresh, the father of Molly's doctor.  
  
Oh. Micah feels stupid. Obviously Mohinder has come back. Micah wonders if Mohinder knows he's there. They've only really met the once, that last night, and then only barely. An elevator ride and gone. Maybe he should say hello. Except it's the middle of the night so. And that's not Matt's voice, Micah realises. Still holding the book, he takes another step closer to the open door, and another. There's only a small gap, but he's at the right angle to peek through it.  
  
A dark hand gestures emphatically. Mohinder, he thinks and shuffles sideways a little, trying to see more. It's not really spying. He's totally going to announce himself any moment. Mohinder steps back out of sight, though, and when Micah steps forward again, someone else moves into a view and he gets a glimpse of horn-rimmed glasses before he realises the man is looking this way, maybe even right at him. He freezes for a moment, then dodges back into the dark, dropping the book on the table and then making full speed for Molly's room as quietly as he can.  
  
He's under cover pretending to sleep by the time the other door opens and it's not until he wakes the next day that he remembers the glass of water he left behind.  
  
  
  
 **4\. Glass Cage**  
  
Molly leaned closer to the glass, frowning.  
  
Micah, who had no idea what was going on, said so. "I have no idea what you're doing."  
  
"Looking for Mohinder," Molly complained. "I said I'd show him to you, didn't I? He was in here yesterday."  
  
Micah looked at her. He looked at the glass tank. He looked back at Molly. "Mohinder was in the tank?"  
  
"Yes!" she insisted, giving him the 'boys!' glare. He quickly tried to look contrite, although he had no idea how Doctor Suresh would have fitted in the tank.  
  
"What was he doing in there?"  
  
"He lives there?" Molly gave him a suspicious look. "I thought you were supposed to be smart."  
  
"I am," Micah complained, because even if you weren't supposed to say that people, he totally was, damn it. "I just don't see what Doctor Suresh would be doing in--"  
  
"Not that Mohinder!" Molly huffed like this should have been obvious. "The other Mohinder!"  
  
"There's more than one Mohinder? Is that his secret? Like Multiple-Man," Micah suggested. Molly looked completely blank. That would be a no, then.  
  
"He's a lizard," Molly said.  
  
"Doctor Suresh is a lizard?!"  
  
"No! The other Mohinder!" Molly was really good at the 'boys!' glare, although Micah was starting to be a little worried that it was actually a personalised 'Micah!' glare and-- Wait, there was a lizard missing in the apartment?  
  
"There's a lizard missing in the apartment?"  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"...lizards like hot places," Micah said. Molly gave him a 'so what?' look. "Where's the hottest place in the apartment right now?"  
  
"The bathroom," Molly said promptly, and then looked horrified, and they both turned to yell "Matt!" although judging by the sudden, surprisingly high-pitched scream and the bangs and crashes of things falling down, the lizard had already been found.  
  
  
  
 **5\. Om Shanti**  
  
Bob has barely stepped off the elevator when it abruptly comes back on, sending Mohinder falling backwards as it races up. The virus vials clink and rattle as he clutches them protectively to his chest. The doors are still open, and he can see the floors rush past. He fumbles for the buttons, hitting the emergency stop, but nothing happens. The lift doesn't slow until it hits the top of the building, and it doesn't exactly 'slow' then so much as slam to a bone jarring halt and then plunge him into darkness.  
  
Almost darkness. There's a crack of light coming up from the light shaft and the floor indicator lights, a five by five square of buttons, are flashing on and off. The vials seem to be intact, at least on the basis that he wasn't dead. He puts them tightly in his bag for safe-keeping and then clambers to his feet and tries the floor buttons, first one at a time, then slamming his hand against the whole bank. Nothing responds. They just flash at him. He tries the security alarm. Nothing.  
  
No. Something. The floor lights. The top five come on, then all down the left and the right edges, then the middle button in the second row. It takes a moment to realise he's looking at a stylised letter M. The lights flash bright and turn off, then come back. An O, now. H. I. He recognises his name before it's even finished.  
  
"What is this?" He asks out loud. Can it be Matt's father, again? No, no, the man's still catatonic. This is real. It's happening.  
  
The elevator shifts under his feet and he puts out a hand to steady himself, encountering only air. The doors are open. He stumbles forward, hits the elevator shaft. There's about half a foot clearance beyond the doors. Maybe enough room to get down, try the next floor. How would he get the doors open? It's a long way to fall. He's still considering when the lights flare up bright and the doors ding and he has to scramble quickly back to avoid being chopped in half. He feels the whompf of air in his face when they slam together and the elevator shifts again.  
  
"What's going on?" He asks. "Who's there?"  
  
The elevator goes dark again. He clutches his bag tighter to his chest. Bob knows he's up here. Bob knows. The button lights flash again. Blink on and off in rapid succession. Y, reads Mohinder. O. U. K. I. On and off. On and off. On.  
  
You killed my mother.  
  
Off.  
  
"Mother?" he says and then, knowing, "Niki didn't-- She infected herself with--" and, far too late, "Micah!"  
  
The elevator falls down, down, down.


End file.
